Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,62

could see the pink velvet bell-bottoms flapping when she walked.

Bilal was still racking his brains for a plan to make some money. He scratched little patterns in the dust and when Moulay Idriss crossed the courtyard he didn’t lift his eyes to greet him but hissed, ‘Don’t stare or he’ll start asking for his rent.’

When Bea came home from the doctor, she went straight upstairs and lay down on her bed. I stood in the doorway.

‘Did he give you any medicine?’

At first she didn’t say anything but then, when I went on standing there shuffling my feet, she mumbled furiously, ‘If you really want to know, my teeth are going to fall out.’

‘All of them?’

Mum was very worried. She made Bea take the different pills the doctor had prescribed and stayed in with her all day. She rubbed cream from a tube on to her mouth. Bea lay still and waited. Whenever she woke, she stared hard at her pillow as if she expected to see it scattered with little lumps of tooth. For a week we waited for them to drop out. Mum even promised that as soon as we had enough money we would go back to England where you could get a false set on the National Health.

Bilal and I spent our days wandering through the market looking for soft things for Bea to eat. Sometimes the Fool came too. I studied him carefully at mealtimes, hoping to pick up some useful tips. But there was a difference: the Fool had one tooth, whereas Bea’s doctor had said ‘All’. The Fool just spiked his food and swallowed.

One day I looked at Bea and realized that her lips were no longer blue. I had been waiting so patiently for her teeth to drop out that I hadn’t noticed she was getting better. I tried to hide my disappointment. I liked having Bea at home and even though I made a show of protest, being bullied into telling her stories was in fact my favourite pastime.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Bilal wanted us to leave the Hotel. Secretly. At night. He said he would show us the ancient city of Fes and take us to the beach at Agadir. Mum wouldn’t agree. ‘We’ve hardly got enough money for food,’ she said, ‘and anyway Moulay Idriss is our friend.’

That was when Bilal hit upon his plan. It was the plan he had been searching for in his head since before my birthday. Bilal demanded a pen and a piece of paper. He rested the paper against a book and began to write. He wrote slowly and carefully.

‘What does it say?’ I leant across his back. The writing closely resembled the black squiggles in Bea’s schoolbook. She tried to make it out, but couldn’t.

Bilal wrote until he reached the bottom of the page and then he handed back Mum’s pen. He stood up and read his letter like a proclamation. The letter was in Arabic. Bea creased up her eyes and listened.

‘It’s begging,‘ Bea said when he had finished, and she turned her back and walked out on to the landing.

‘There are five pillars that every good Muslim must stand by,’ Bilal explained. ‘He must say his prayers. Study the Koran. Fast. Go to Mecca once in his life if he possibly can. And give alms to the poor and hospitality to strangers.’

Mum listened. She wasn’t angry like Bea, but she wasn’t sure. If Mum wasn’t sure, there was nothing Bilal could do. He rolled the letter into a scroll and tied it with a ribbon. He set it neatly in the corner of the room.

The days were not so hot as they had been and sometimes it even rained. I kept wondering if we’d missed Christmas. Bea and I decided to visit Aunty Rose to see if her clay figures were out on display. No one answered the door when we knocked. We peered through the windows. The furniture was covered in white sheets and Mary, Joseph and the cradle were nowhere to be seen. We waited patiently for her to reappear, but when it began to grow dark and there was still no sign, we gave up and headed for home.

I was walking a little behind Bea, re-examining in my mind the great injustice of Aunty Rose and the pyjamas and how such a mistake could be overlooked. I was wearing my pyjamas now under my burnous, and even though I had grown taller in the last year the trouser legs still needed